


Sanctuary

by Asphyxiate



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-08-29
Updated: 2013-08-29
Packaged: 2017-12-25 01:10:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/946854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Asphyxiate/pseuds/Asphyxiate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Axel doesn't want Roxas to go before his time. Roxas leaves the Organization, and when they meet again, fate is not on their side.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sanctuary

Notes: Read at your own risk. I do not own any of the Square-Enix characters, even Axel. Unfortunately.  
~*~

It was a typical Tuesday morning on the day Roxas and Axel became best friends. Or as they preferred to call it, not enemies. In Organization Thirteen, everyone was an enemy unless they deemed each other not so. That was how it was and always had been for Nobodies. And it was early that Tuesday morning, maybe an hour before anyone else was remotely awake, that a certain blonde-haired boy threw his long black hooded coat on over a tank top and a pair of pants before proceeding to leave his room out into the hallway of the Castle that Never Was.

Roxas was up early. Although the sky was never truly light where he lived, and where the Organization had its nest, it was pitch black as he pushed open the great castle doors and proceeded out into the streets. Twilight Town was a little ways away— whether it was the real one or the pitiful coded version Ansem had created to keep him under wraps all those years ago, Roxas didn’t care. He wanted out. He’d been cooped up in the Castle for too long, sent on too many missions, confronted by too many Nobodies who considered themselves his superior. No, they were all the same; lesser beings, all searching for a true life of their own without existing as simply a replica of somebody who was loved.

It wasn’t long until the rolling hills of Twilight Town came into Roxas’ view. The village was like a second home to Roxas, although he knew it was much less than that. His time there had merely been a simulated prison, spending time with coded friends who never really existed. Then again, neither did Roxas, or at least he wasn’t supposed to. From ashes to ashes, right? The blonde sighed as he passed by the accessory shop, the restaurant, the recreation center, and every landmark he knew in every fiber of his being but yet didn’t really know at all.

The path to the station was long and winding, and when Roxas reached the clock tower, he was almost tired. Making a left, he approached the ice cream stand, which was always open, blue eyes flickering over the sign for a brief moment before addressing the man behind the counter. 

“I’ll have two sea salt ice creams, sir,” Roxas said, unsmiling. His gut told him to buy two. Roxas always followed his gut. With one ice cream in each hand, Roxas headed for the clock tower. By this time the sun was rising, purple dawn kissing the horizon and shedding a gentle violet over the contours of the dusky town.   
Roxas began the interminable climb of endless flights of stairs, his black boots clicking on each one. The interior was crumbling, like the building’s foundation had no strength left to stand, but a building made out of data would never fall. The second floor from the top was Roxas’ destination. The blonde stepped out onto a landing, shivering in the morning breeze that ruffled his hood and threatened to sting his cheeks. A drop of ice cream fell at his foot; he watched it quiver on the stone for a moment before walking forwards, winding around the front of the tower. A ledge hung precariously over the town; cool marble giving way to dizzying awnings and cobblestone below.

Roxas sat down, legs dangling over the side of the ledge. He held his ice cream in one hand, giving it a ponderous lick from time to time, and the other in the other. It was maybe five more minutes before he heard footsteps behind him, but nothing startled Roxas. He continued to watch the sun sweep across the wakeful sky, the original purple tint becoming golden as it hit the edge of the treeline.

“Awfully nice of you,” said a sarcastic voice from behind Roxas, deep and pleasant behind the cool, ironic façade. An unseen hand tore the ice cream from Roxas’ grip, and the blonde turned his head to see Axel, his tall redheaded friend, grab the ice scream with a split-second smirk and sit down on the ledge next to him in a flurry of red and black. They didn’t speak while Roxas studied Axel’s profile curiously, noting that there was something about the harsh angles and planes of his face that Roxas found it hard to draw his eyes away from. Axel cracked a sudden smile; deep shadows painting his cheekbones and beneath his eyes as a ray of light hit him straight on. 

“We’re going to get in trouble,” Roxas remarked. Another drop of ice cream grazed his Organization coat, leaving a faint trail of blue that he hastily smudged with a finger. 

“No, we aren’t,” Axel replied, “Demyx is responsible for missions this week and he won’t care.” The older boy’s words hung in the air between them like a dead bird from a string; hollow but somehow hopeful like a twisted reminder of rebirth. A smile crept up on Roxas; he withdrew for a second before letting it flash, bright enough to rival the dawn breaking in the distance. 

“You gave it some thought then,” said Roxas. Axel looked over at him, confusion written in blurry script all over his face. “Coming here with me. Skipping out training. That’s weird,” the younger boy clarified, setting down a line for Axel to cross. 

“More or less,” Axel responded, “but not as weird as a skinny boy buying two ice creams at five in the morning. Don’t ask me how I know that this is the first time you’ve ever held dairy in both hands.” Roxas leaned forward, letting the sticky but ice cream-free popsicle stick slip from his fingers. He did not respond until it splintered with a jarring crack on the train tracks below. 

“I guess you’re right. I just had a feeling,” Roxas admitted, quickly realizing the statement’s superficiality afterwards. Axel laughed bitterly, breaking off abruptly as his distaste at living a half-life slithered from his lips in the form of a sarcastic smoker’s cough. 

“Now you’re telling me. I always thought you were psycho,” Axel rasped. His green gaze dragged a burning line from the horizon to Roxas. “You always had these nightmares the first couple of weeks. I could hear you screaming from my room.” Roxas looked uncomfortable, eyes darting from the ledge to the sky to his hands twisting in his lap— anywhere but at Axel, who was now drawing out a pack of cigarettes from his coat pocket. 

“You shouldn’t smoke,” Roxas said finally, looking up at Axel with an almost disapproving frown gracing his boyish features. The redhead looked taken aback, and then threw his head back with laughter; genuine this time. 

“The number of times I’ve been told that by mama’s boys like you is probably more than you can count in your pretty little head,” Axel grinned as he flicked the lighter and brought the cigarette to his lips. He blew a perfect ring of smoke into the air where it dissipated, sunlight filtering gold through the edges as Roxas tried hard not to hold his breath. “Anyways, it’s not like it matters whether I die of lung cancer. It’s not like anyone will come to my funeral. It’s not like any of us are even alive.” Roxas cast a sideways glance at Axel, all sober sloping lines and green eyes as another haze of smoke passed his lips. 

“I’d come to your funeral,” he murmured, nudging Axel’s leg with his foot where it hung over the ledge, kicking at the stone beneath him. The redhead got up and smashed the cigarette butt into the ledge with his boot. It burned a charred circle on the rock. 

“No you wouldn’t,” Axel replied without looking at Roxas. “You’d push me off this ledge right now and watch my neck break on the tracks.” He rubbed his neck absentmindedly as if dressing the wound, and Roxas wondered strangely and suddenly what it would be like to trace the shape of Axel’s spine with his fingertips. Human beings, especially Nobodies, were so fragile. Even Axel had hollow bones like a bird, like a feather blown into motion. Strong as steel, but Roxas himself could watch him splinter into pieces like the popsicle stick that lay in fragments fifty feet below.

“Yeah I would,” Roxas argued, before stopping to think for a second. All of a sudden, looking at the train tracks became dizzying, and the younger boy couldn’t help but belittle his existence in the face of the dawning world. But then reality returned, and he sat up a little straighter with a smile. “I would pay for your funeral. Organize the whole thing.” Axel’s face seemed to soften.

“You don’t know what you’re dealing with, Roxas,” Axel said. “Funerals cost a lot of money… and I want to be burned. Cremated, if you will. You haven’t got enough for a lousy hamburger, let alone a funeral.” He stopped to bring a second cigarette to his lips. With the nicotine-laden smoke came more words, disorganized. “I want… to be your friend, Roxas,” Axel breathed out, “no— not your friend, I don’t want to kill you and I never want to watch you die.” He slumped then, as if his confession of sorts was his backbone and framework that had been removed.

“We all have to go sometime,” Roxas intoned, not really meaning it. He became suddenly and acutely aware of their shoulders brushing. His left arm became a spider’s web, thin and tingling where Axel’s had touched. “I don’t want to watch you die either,” the blonde boy amended, hastily as if burned. His face turned the color of Axel’s hair. 

“Let’s settle it then,” said Axel, and his voice became suddenly quiet. “I’m not your enemy, Roxas. Shake on it?” Axel extended his hand, an extension of his heart. It waited like a shadow or a dead thing, slender fingers covered by black leather. Roxas took the hand in his own bare one. 

“Cross my heart and hope to die,” muttered Roxas without really thinking about it. Axel’s grip on Roxas’ hand grew intolerably painful.

“God dammit, Roxas, we just talked about this,” came Axel’s response (accompanied by an exasperated puff of smoke.) “Hope to die and all bets are off. I’ll just push you right here and now. And if now’s a bad time I’ll stab you in your sleep with my pocketknife. Got it memorized?” Roxas looked shocked for a second before grinning bright as the sun. Roxas was not the sun, Axel thought, because one day the sun would burn out. Roxas would never burn out. In Axel’s mind he would remain immortal.

“I won’t die ‘till you say I can. Promise,” Roxas said, fingers searching for a grip on the ledge before they finally found purchase. “But there’s no saying I’m not gonna protect you if you’re in trouble.” Axel looked up sharply, then down with a sigh.

“Don’t say dumb things like that,” Axel whispered, and before Roxas could indeed say another dumb thing like that he reached over and gathered the younger boy into a tired but sincere embrace. Roxas was tingling all over. Axel smelled like cinnamon and woodsmoke. He lingered a little long on Roxas’ arm when pulling away, gloved fingers grazing the tanned skin from where the coat sleeve was bunched up right above his elbow. Roxas was suddenly aware that he was blushing, and so he turned away into the wind in hopes of cooling down his burning skin.

“We should get back to the castle,” Roxas said, words thick with disappointment. Axel nodded noncommittally and flicked his popsicle stick and cigarette butt into the air, watching for a few seconds as they spun heads and tails as if partaking in some ancient dance. He scuffed a boot on the gray ledge stone, exhaling with a sigh as his gaze caught on a black streak there. 

Neither of them said a word as they descended the countless stairs to the train station plaza. Axel’s labored breaths spoke for him, and Roxas caught a glimpse of the older boy with hollowed cheeks, pupils almost swallowing dull green like a ravenous creature devouring him from the inside out. Roxas didn’t like the look in Axel’s eyes, whether it was nicotine-influenced or otherwise. He would rather see them turned heavenward with a hint of gold, sparks flying as he described passion, or fixed on Roxas’ own face. 

“The funny thing,” Axel remarked, “is that we don’t know if we’ll live another minute, another second, another year.” His words fell flat in time to the thoughtless beats of their feet on the stone. “We say things that will ultimately be rendered hopeless or empty, expand ourselves to fit others that, sure as breathing, are going to leave a hole that even our minds can’t fill.” Roxas started, interrupting their rhythmic descent. 

“We have to,” said the younger boy defensively. “I know that I want to be stretched wide enough to fill the whole world. I want to know everything there is to know, and feel everything there is to feel. I want to keep other people’s souls in me so that when they die they will still be remembered forever.” That’s just it, thought Axel. He quit trying to immortalize himself a long time ago. He was just an Axel, another blink in the vast expanse of time. There was no way a nobody could live forever.

“You and I used to be so alike,” Axel sighed. His sigh was like an outstretched arm, silent and shaky and begging to be pulled up and out of the chasm of despair and hopelessness that had held him fast for too many years. Roxas looked at him, blue eyes an ocean that held something wild and unattainable. 

“Maybe it’s better that you’re not like me,” he pondered, “maybe that leaves more room for things you have that I don’t yet know. Our differences could fit together like a missing puzzle piece.” Axel laughed shortly, the broken sound rebounding sharp and deadly in the narrow stairwell. Neither said a word as the claustrophobia-inducing walls gave way to a cobblestone plaza and lazy autumn light. Something discordant hung tersely in the air as the two hooded figures strode with purpose across the diagonal of the plaza. If anyone else had been there so early in the morning they would have marveled to see the figures disappear in a sudden swirl of darkness.


End file.
